Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Obama’s Secret Plan for a Third Term

One of the things that makes it so endlessly (and simultaneously) amusing and annoying to follow right wing rhetoric is how it can be both repetitive and contradictory. Here’s an example that shows both in all their glory. Before the election we heard several predictions from the right, some of them about the election itself and some of them about what would happen after the election.
We heard many wingnuts claim that Obama was going to cancel the election and impose martial law in order to extend his time in office and turn himself into a de facto dictator. Didn’t happen, of course. And we heard predictions of doom if he was reelected, how his socialist ideas would destroy the American economy and turn us into a virtual third world country. So now comes Frank Porter Stansberry, founder of Stansberry and Associates, an investment firm for the wingnut set that is always making bizarre claims.

He’s now looking forward to the 2016 election, which he says will be won by Obama despite the 22nd Amendment’s prohibition on a president serving more than two terms because of mystical “forces” backing Obama that will unleash an economic boom the likes of which we’ve never seen, allowing him to ride a huge wave of popularity to a third term. Mother Jones has copies of two different emails sent out to everyone on the mailing lists of conservative sites Townhall, Newsmax and Human Events, all telling them to click a link and view this slideshow explaining the whole thing. It’s rather amusing to watch.

Stansberry says those forces will create an economic boom that will make millions of Americans much wealthier and improve the standard of living for everyone in the country. Great news, right? Nope. Because it will “make an idol” of President Obama and allow him to “redraw the rules that govern the presidency” to seek “unlimited power” and become “a tyrant unlike any other in American history.”

Sadly, I can only get Herman Cain advisers to bet me on crazy predictions like this. I’d love to make a huge bet with Stansberry on whether this happens. Like every other dystopic prediction from the right wing, it isn’t going to happen. And like every other failed prediction, it will do nothing at all to stanch the flow of even more failed predictions. Being a wingnut is never having to admit you’re wrong even when you’re almost never right.

Those “mystical forces” had better get cracking then – ‘cos he’ll need the boom to be in full swing by the 2014 mid-terms so he can get control of both Houses of Congress and bundle the Rethugs out of enough states to ratify the repeal of the 22nd …

‘make millions of Americans much wealthier and improve the standard of living for everyone in the country…. will “make an idol” of President Obama and allow him to … become “a tyrant unlike any other in American history.”’

I think this is a collaborative effort with other Christian prophets. Each contributor is going to make a general prophesy about the state of the economy and what the President does at the end of the next term. The sum of all prophecies will generally cover all possibilities. Then when one or some of the prophecies essentially matches a future outcome, God wins!

“We heard many wingnuts claim that Obama was going to cancel the election and impose martial law in order to extend his time in office and turn himself into a de facto dictator”

Pure projection. The Cheney Admin (bush the lesser) floated a trial balloon talking point on doing exactly this in early to middle 2008. It was shot down on the right but it didn’t stop they from thinking through the idea out loud.

mystical “forces” backing Obama that will unleash an economic boom the likes of which we’ve never seen

I don’t keep up on these things… are these mystical forces controlling the world economy still supposed to be Jewish bankers? In which case, isn’t Obama supposedly hating on Israel?

And wait, I thought reelecting Obama would harm the economy? This seems contrad—- OOOH.

This story actually grants some fascinating insight into the pathological Republican mindset: 1) By definition, a politician not of their party is both incompetent and evil. 2) Therefore, if he is in power, his politics will result in disaster. 3) If his politics do not result in disaster, this is even worse because it strengthens his popular support, which is disastrous because see points 1) and 2).

I am seriously in the wrong line of work. Here I am, working like a sucker for a paycheck, when all I have to do to make money hand over fist is to make bizarre, hateful, nonsensical claims on the internet.

Reminds me of last winter when there were a couple of months in a row of 200k plus jobs created and Rick Santorum and a few others said that the reason why companies were hiring was because they were expecting that Obama was going to lose in November. Either they pulled it out of their asses, or they were really too stupid to realize that more people finding work would increase Obama’s chances of being reelected.

the difference is that Cheney et. al. actually DID float the idea for a brief moment before it got shot down.

I assume your talking about Rep. Brad Sherman’s statement that Administration officials, during the debate over TARP, said something to the effect that if TARP didn’t pass the economic consequences would be so dire that there could be rioting in the streets, etc.

Sherman later qualified:

Thank you for your email. During the debate on the Bailout Bill Members on both sides of the aisle used exaggerated rhetoric on the consequences of the bill passing or not passing. Congressman Sherman’s statement on Martial Law describes one example of such rhetoric. As Congressman Sherman says in the statement I sent you “It should be clear from the context of my speech that I did not believe that martial law would be declared under any circumstances and I did not think that such absurd and outlandish comments should cause members to vote for the bill.” Sherman’s floor statement also said that proponents of the bill were going around saying the “sky was going to fall.” No one believes the sky is going to fall. The martial law comment was of the same quality. It was deliberate hyperbole meant to drive home the idea that incredibly bad things would happen if the bill was not passed. As no one believes the sky is going to fall, no one believed there would be martial law.

Really? I did not hear about this with regards to Cheney. Do you have a link with information about this?

I did at one time, but that was years ago. I have no idea if I can find it again, but it did exist. I’m not the only one who recalls something like that; see Baal @#5. There definitely was something of substance to it.

The Cheney Admin (bush the lesser) floated a trial balloon talking point on doing exactly this in early to middle 2008. It was shot down on the right but it didn’t stop they from thinking through the idea out loud.

Citation requested that the Bush-43 Administration was considering such and even expressed it out loud.

I instead remember some people, including comments posted at Ed’s blog at ScienceBlogs.com, imagining plans were in action within in the Bush Admin. no different than the imaginings we encounter now from some on the right towards the Obama Admin.

this was no secret; many of these things had been discussed, even on the old “Project for a New American Century” website (which they have now long removed, and only bits and pieces remain from caches and commentaries).

second, there was an article frequenting the interwebs around 2007-2008 by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis that was exploring the possibilities of what the Bush Administration COULD do, based on the passage of articles during his administration like:

Right after Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern in 1972 for a second term in the White House, a small group set up shop in D.C. to lobby Congress to repeal the 22nd Amendment and allow our Great Leader to seek a third term. Then the Watergate scandal began to unravel and third-term talk died away before it even really got started. No need to talk about a third term when Tricky Dick can’t get even odds that he’ll manage to finish his second!

I feel reasonably safe in saying that if the 22d were repealed, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of it being applied to a sitting president. This is why, whenever anyone talks about it, I dismiss it out of hand. Besides, although I think Obama’s done an okay job, I don’t think he’d be popular enough to get a third term anyway, and I don’t think there’s ever been a president with enough popularity to get away with a self-coup.

I have a clear memory of Cheney talking about post ‘event’ decent into chaos and how a delay to the 2008 election should happen and maybe an american monarchy set up as a better solution. I was livid at the time. I was wanting wider recognition of Cheney’s admission of a full take over of the federal government.

It was a video clip but can’t find anything via google. The search terms are too common and there is a ton of speculation from the left (and moderates by the time 2008 rolled around) on the what limits on power, if any Cheney and Bush would respect (lots is made of NSPD51 but that’s not something I remember).

I guess I’ll not repeat what my memory suggests until I can find the clip.

Is what I would say if I only had a Brain Stem with a few random bits of matter floating around in some goo (but yet could still form words only for the purposes of commenting on videos from the Interwebs).

It’s because these same types talk about repealing the 22nd when their favorite is in office (St. Bonzo & Shrub the Second). Of course, they didn’t claim mysterious forces aside from preordainment from Gawd for Dubya.

Right-wing paranoia over Obama declaring martial law, or suspending the Constitution or establishing a dictatorship are one thing, but this is just a proposal to let a president stand for a third election … as is perfectly legal and possible in nearly every other Western nation. He’d still have to maintain the confidence of the people for three or more terms by winning the elections.

In a side note, I have it on good authority that for several years now, in polls asking Republicans what they think of a ‘second term’ for Obama the most common response is ‘uppity’.

Don’t most people on the right also believe that no one can control the economy and that any attempt by the government to manage it will lead to more poverty? If that’s the case, wouldn’t Obama be incapable of doing this anyway?

“In fairness, there was a fair amount of paranoia on the left about Dubya pulling the same thing. Not that it makes it any less crazy…”

In fairness, there were Florida’s and Ohio’s ballot results in the 2004 and 2008 presidential races.

Considering the GOP’s obvious desire to retain the White House, add to their majority in the HoR and obtain a majority in the Senate; their predilection for being lower than a snake going under a limbo stick AND the deep pockets of the Kochsuckers and their ilk–musing about the possibility of Bushco doings something completely extra-legal to maintain their grip on the controls was not, strictly speaking, paranoia.

Paranoia would be me saying that the GOP deliberately fended off attempts by any reasonably sane individual to take a run at Obama under the banner of the GOP–because they knew the economy was still in the shitter and wanted to have ObamaFEMA look REALLY bad so that the dems wouldn’t have a chance against the Norris/Paul ticket in 2016.

dingojack’s cite digs the hole ever-further. Contingency planning to react to damage which compromises the integrity of an election should be a requirement of good governance. To go off on a bender that this is proof of an effort to bring about a Republican monarchy is not only absurd, but fucking nuts.

Liberal delusion is even uglier than conservative delusion. That’s because we’re not supposed to possess the mental characteristics that make it impossible to confront reality, and yet in this thread we see a handful of posters who can’t confront history, who want to believe their political opponents conspired to do all the nefarious things they imagine and preemptively warned us about which turned out to not be true.

I disagree, they’re about the same level of ugly. KKKrazzeepants mofo’s exist at both ends of the political spectrum–the difference being that the “end” of the ReiKKKwing side of things starts to the right of center.

There are very few, if any, dem pols on record as having said that Bushco was willing to go the rout of a coup or commit massive election fraud to secure victory in the the 2000-2012 elections. For the GOP, that accusation–against the DNC–is very nearly a rite of passage. ACORN was disbanded because of a lie fomented by Republican operatives. The scumbags that do the dirty work for the GOP in the areas of voter registration and electioneering are still in business, despite a history of abuse and illegalities.

Yeah, there be some pretty whacked out liberals but they are outnumbered–in a staggering ratio–by the reactionaries that call themselves republicans. And they are almost universally considered to be nuts by PARTY leaders, not welcomed to sit in at strategy sessions.

the point was to indicate that there was a difference between when “liberals” (and it wasn’t just people on the left worried about it) were considering what W might do to suspend the elections and push himself into a 3rd term, vs what the current crop of extreme righties talking about Obama pushing a 3rd term.

now, we’ve established 3 completely separate issues to document that there were, in fact, issues directly related to this during W’s tenure where one could at least make the case.

now… where are those for Obama?

they don’t exist, at all.

you’re still living with trying to ditch that rightie bias, I think, Michael.

FACT: The economy has the slowest growth under Obama than any other President in history. He does not know what to do about it. All he knows is we need more taxes. He will go down as the worst President in our nations history …no doubt. This third term stuff is BS…Americans would never allow this man to have a third term. What we need to be doing is limiting the terms congress can serve.